I am a social media skeptic.  There, I said it…again.  I believe it has it’s place in the marketing mix but sometimes it’s all anyone wants to talk about and honestly, I just don’t believe it warrants all the attention given it. My primary concerns are that a) the reach of social media for everyday brands is over-estimated and b) the enduring effectiveness of “old” media is under-estimated.

That’s why I always love finding someone smarter than me who agrees.  It’s the “agreeing” part that I love.  (It’s really not that hard to find people smarter than me.)

Professor Mark Ritson, in a recent column wrote about his thoughts on social media.  Here are some of the highlights.

The problem with Twitter is it’s basically clutter

“The average click-through rate for a corporate tweet is around 0.5 per cent. If only one in every 200 followers click on a hyperlink, it represents a depressing proxy for how many people actually notice your tweets in the first place. Second, given the poor general number of followers many brands have achieved on Twitter, the reality, when you multiply out this already small potential audience by 0.05, is a “whole lot of nothing.” Statistically speaking” Read the rest of this entry »